208 
Pliarmacentical  Meeting. 
Am.  Jour.  Pharm. 
April,  1901. 
because  they  are  mostly  phenol  derivatives.  Disagreeable  tastes  are 
remedied  usually  by  the  conversion  of  the  substance  into  an  insoluble 
compound,  which  is  then  split  up  by  the  secretions  in  the  intestinal 
canal. 
The  author,  in  closing,  referred  to  the  intestinal  antiseptics,  anti- 
pyretics, anaesthetics  and  proprietary  combinations.  The  paper  will 
be  published  in  full  in  a  later  issue  of  this  Journal. 
In  the  discussion  which  followed,  Professor  Sadtler  said  that  if  it 
were  so  easy  as  Professor  Coblentz  had  indicated  to  make  the  com- 
pound desired,  it  would  help  to  clear  up  such  questions  in  litigation 
as  involved  the  question  whether  or  not  the  product  is  an  inven- 
tion. In  reply  to  Wallace  Procter  as  to  whether  the  processes  are 
not  intricate,  Professor  Coblentz  said  that  in  some  cases  the  process 
is  exceedingly  simple,  as  in  the  production  of  cocaine  from  ecgo- 
nine,  whereas  in  others  it  is  difficult.  He  further  said  that  many 
compounds  which  readily  break  up  in  a  test-tube  do  not  on  a  manu- 
facturing scale,  and  vice  versa.  The  results  which  will  be  obtained 
cannot  always  be  determined  in  advance.  He  said  that  there  was  a 
great  amount,  of  difficulty  in  this  country  to  carry  on  this  kind  of 
work,  and  that  there  were  a  number  of  reasons  why  such  work  could 
be  carried  on  more  advantageously  abroad  than  here  ;  for  one  thing 
tax-free  alcohol  offers  advantages  to  foreign  manufacturers  ;  also 
they  are  willing  to  employ  from  50  to  100  chemists;  to  wait  for 
results ;  and  are  satisfied  with  negative  as  well  as  positive  results ; 
the  former  being  not  infrequently  more  valuable  to  them  than  the 
latter. 
Mr.  M.  I.  Wilbert  said  that  he  had  found  difficulty  in  preparing 
sterilized  solutions  of  cocaine  and  at  the  same  time  preventing  their 
hydrolysis.  Mr.  Gordon  said  that  inasmuch  as  distilled  water  was 
slightly  alkaline,  he  had  prepared  sterile  cocaine  solutions  with 
slightly  acidified  distilled  water.  Dr.  Wendell  Reber  said  that  as  a 
local  anaesthetic  to  mucous  membranes  eucaine  B  deservedly  holds 
a  high  place,  and  is  widely  used.  Moreover,  the  recent  experience 
of  surgeons  has  demonstrated  its  almost  perfect  adaptability  to  the 
production  of  complete  insensibility  of  the  body  below  the  waist  line 
by  injection  of  its  solutions  into  the  spinal  column.  He  wished  that 
Dr.  Coblentz  had  said  something  about  the  synthesis  of  holocain  and 
its  relation  to  the  rest  of  these  synthetics.  To  the  eye  surgeon  holo- 
cain is  the  nearest  approach,  so  far,  to  the  ideal  local  anaesthetic  for 
